But no Confederate division pounced upon the beaten Yankees. Polk, Breckinridge, Longstreet, Buckner, Hood, Wheeler, Forrest-all the fighting generals waited for an order to follow up Rosecrans’ disastrous retreat and sweep the Union Army out of Tennessee. But as usual Bragg vacillated. He wrote out an order for pursuit, then quickly countermanded it. The Confederates formed a siege line on Missionary Ridge facing Chattanooga, and again waited for the enemy to take the initiative.
2
As soon as the two opposing armies settled into positions, Bragg again began talking of dismounting the cavalry—not only Morgan’s men but many other regiments in need of replacement mounts. When Forrest learned that Adam Johnson had been ordered to march his dismounted men into eastern Tennessee, the General advised Johnson to take Kirkpatrick’s mounted battalion along with him “to get them as far as possible from the Old Man’s clutches.” This ruse worked until the Kentuckians were ordered back to Missionary Ridge in November—when it became obvious that the Federals were preparing for a second great battle. In a desperate effort to shore up his infantry positions, Bragg dismounted most of Johnson’s men.
The Federals meanwhile were preparing to throw a powerful army against Bragg. General Grant, who had been named commander of all Union forces in the West, arrived in Chattanooga to take personal command. From Mississippi, Sherman bought his crack divisions; from Virginia, General Joe Hooker brought two corps by rail and boat to give Grant heavy numerical strength over the Confederates.
On November 23, the Union armies launched a massive assault against Missionary Ridge. Although the Confederates held the high ground, they were outmanned and outgunned. They had been existing on tough beef and rancid bacon for weeks, and morale was low, especially among the dismounted cavalrymen.
The first sight of the immense army in blue—superbly equipped, well-fed, nattily uniformed—was startling, almost frightening, even to the most hard-bitten veterans on Missionary Ridge. One of Adam Johnson’s troopers, Will Dyer, described Sherman’s divisions as they appeared to him on the morning of November 25, the decisive day of the battle. “We who had the fortune, or misfortune, to be on top of Missionary Ridge on the forenoon of November 25, 1863, witnessed one of the grandest military pageants ever seen.…From early morning till Sherman’s lines were formed, brigades, divisions and corps of his troops were moving across the valley and over the opposite hills in long blue lines with arms glistening in the sunshine, halting here and there till there was one long blue line in plain view in the order of a dress parade. Everything was calm and peaceful and although we knew that this line would soon be hurled at us with death dealing force we could not withhold exclamations of admiration.”
The dismounted troopers of the 2nd Kentucky might have read the future there on that bright autumn morning. They were witnessing power the South could no longer resist; they were watching the beginning of Sherman’s dream, the Great March to the Sea which would end the war in the West.
Before that day was over, Bragg’s veterans were reeling in defeat back down the east slopes of Missionary Ridge toward Chickamauga Creek, where they had won their hollow victory only a few weeks earlier. The next day the retreat became a stampede back to the camps at Dalton. Dogged rear-guard action and rainy weather saved the Confederates from total disaster, but it was the end for Braxton Bragg. Richmond headquarters at last had had enough of his retreats, and named Joseph E. Johnston commander of the Army of Tennessee.
3
Receiving fresh assurances from Richmond that he was to continue the reorganization of Morgan’s men, Colonel Adam Johnson now established headquarters in Decatur, Georgia, and set out in earnest to remount his veterans of Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge.
In mid-December a patrol of mounted men under Lieutenant Josiah Gathright, who had been on picket duty above Dalton, was ordered to Decatur by way of eastern North Carolina. Johnson had hopes that Gathright might collect a few horses in the isolated mountain communities and bring them in to the Decatur camp.
While en route on this dog-leg march, Lieutenant Gathright halted on a raw December day in Franklin, North Carolina. Noticing a cobbler’s sign above one of the wings of the town’s single hotel, Gathright decided to stop long enough to have a pair of boots mended.
He was waiting comfortably in the warmth of the little shop when a stranger entered and announced excitedly: “General Morgan is in the hotel!”
“What General Morgan?” asked Gathright.
“Why, General John Morgan, the great cavalryman.”
Gathright was amused. He was certain that Morgan was in an Ohio prison. Suspecting that somebody was masquerading as the General, the young Lieutenant decided to unmask the fraud.
“Please take me to him,” he said, and followed the man through a side door into the hotel and on to an inner parlor. Gathright was astounded at what he saw. “Imagine my surprise,” he wrote afterward, “when I stepped into the parlor and found myself in the presence of the real thing—our general. He was surrounded by a bevy of ladies, and was looking as ‘chipper’ and gay as though he had never been in a penitentiary.”
Morgan was delighted to see Gathright. He inquired about Captain William Davis and Lieutenant Eastin, and was pleased to hear how Gathright had escaped with forty-two men from Twelve Mile Island. He also wanted to know the fate of other survivors of his regiments, and declared that he would come to Adam Johnson’s camp at Decatur as soon as he had visited with his wife in Columbia, South Carolina.
The only thing Morgan seemed to be distressed about was the fate of Captain Tom Hines, who had allowed himself to be captured in Tennessee in order that Morgan might escape and continue southward. (Unknown to Morgan, Hines had already escaped again, and was that day making his way toward Confederate headquarters at Dalton.)
4
John Morgan was in Columbia with his wife for Christmas, learning for the first time that Martha had lost an expected child in pregnancy—as a result of her recent flight from Tennessee to South Carolina. He stayed with her during the holidays, trying to console her. By the year’s end he had changed his mind about going directly to Johnson’s camp at Decatur; instead he would go first to the seat of power in Richmond.
On January 7, 1864, he and Martha made a triumphal entry into the capital of the Confederacy. Although the high command did not receive him warmly—his old enemy, the deposed Bragg, was now there acting as a special military adviser to President Davis—the Richmond populace went wild with enthusiasm. Women asked for locks of his hair, editors wanted the exclusive story of his escape, soldiers begged for his autograph, presents were showered upon him, and poems written in his honor.
A special reception was held in the city hall with such notables on hand as Provisional-Governor Hawes of Kentucky, and Generals Jeb Stuart and A. P. Hill. St. Léger Grenfell came with Stuart, and Morgan persuaded the Englishman to remain in Richmond as a special agent to intercede for him with the War Department. Lieutenant Colonel Robert A. Alston, who had just been exchanged, also was there, and Morgan immediately promised him a post in his yet unformed command.*
After the band played the “Marseillaise,” Morgan was called upon for a speech, the Richmond Enquirer reporting it as follows: “Fellow citizens, I thank you for this reception and hope that my future career will prove that I am not unworthy of the honor you have done me. Not being accustomed to public speaking, I will give way to others who are.”
During most of January he remained in Richmond seeking authorization for a new command, struggling with the military bureaucracy and attempting to thaw the coldness of the few powerful men who opposed him.
There was one delightful surprise—Tom Hines appeared suddenly one day, none the worse for his adventures after being captured and separated from Morgan in Tennessee. Hines’ successes in making escapes had led him to devise a mysterious plan for freeing the Morgan prisoners in the North, and he was in Richmond to secure authority for this dangerous venture.
N
either Morgan nor Hines overlooked calling upon anyone who might help them. “General Morgan came to my office during the week,” General Josiah Gorgas, the Confederate chief of ordnance noted in his diary of January 17. “His hair has not quite recovered from the cropping it received in the Ohio penitentiary. Captain Hines, one of his escaped comrades, was with him, a modest young-looking man of active build. These men will be heroes of history.”
On the twenty-seventh, Morgan wrote Secretary of War James Seddon, requesting permission to assemble a command in southwestern Virginia and proposing an invasion of Kentucky to capture horses. “The Yankee government,” he said, “has now in Kentucky some 15,000 cavalry horses, sent to recruit their condition in the comfortable homesteads and on the rich grass of that country.” He believed that a sudden raid into Kentucky would also draw off a portion of “the Yankee army from J. E. Johnston and Longstreet.”
But in the face of threats by Bragg to order Morgan court-martialed for crossing the Ohio River, the War Department would promise him nothing. He was advised that he belonged to the Army of Tennessee and therefore should report directly to General Johnston for orders.
At last he departed Richmond in disgust, leaving Grenfell behind to serve as his agent, and taking Colonel Alston to Georgia as his temporary adjutant. He would have liked Hines to go with him also, but the mysterious captain had secured the backing he needed for his plan to free war prisoners and was already assigned to duty in the Signal Bureau, learning how to send and read cipher.
Early in February, Morgan and Alston arrived at Decatur, finding conditions in the Georgia camps much worse than they had expected. They were shocked at the lack of supplies, the ragged uniforms, the shortages of rations and arms.
Their first act was to publish and circulate a proclamation:
SOLDIERS: I am once more among you, after a long and painful imprisonment. I am anxious to be again in the field. I therefore call on all the soldiers of my command to assemble at once at the rendezvous which has been established at this place.…Come at once, and come cheerfully, for I want no man in my command who has to be sent to his duty by a provost-marshal. The work before us will be arduous, and will require brave hearts and willing hands. Let no man falter or delay, for no time is to be lost. Every one must bring his horse and gun who can.
JOHN H. MORGAN
Brigadier General Provisional Army Confederate States
Official:
R. A. Alston,
Lieutenant Colonel and Acting A.A. General.
Confronted by shortages of everything, Morgan’s determined survivors established their own quartermaster department. From their ranks, tailors, blacksmiths and saddlemakers were organized to reoutfit the command, the Texans turning out a number of excellent Mexican saddletrees, preferred by all Morgan troopers.
As the winter wore away, several additional veterans drifted in from Kentucky, men who had escaped and had been hiding out in the hills. Lieutenant Colonel James Bowles, nominal commander of the old 2nd Kentucky (but who had been unable to ride on the Great Raid) reported for duty and was placed in charge of one of the camps.
When Morgan returned to Richmond early in the spring, he won at last his long battle with the military bureaucrats. He was promised the Department of Southwestern Virginia, and not only was he given his mounted men at Decatur, but the dismounted men at Dalton also were ordered transferred to him.
While in Richmond, Morgan was surprised to meet Colonel D. Howard Smith, commander of the 5th Kentucky, who had been suddenly exchanged. After falling seriously ill in the Columbus penitentiary, Smith had been transferred to Johnson’s Island, and then through the intercession of Union Kentuckians who had been his lifelong friends, he was granted a special exchange. Although Smith was still ailing, he gladly accepted Morgan’s invitation to join the new command at Abingdon, Virginia, as soon as he was fully recovered.
In April, Adam Johnson received orders to march all the Morgan men from Decatur to Virginia. It was a leisurely springtime ride up through the hills of the Carolinas, and the knowledge that at last they were to be trooping together again under the old Morgan banner brought a buoyancy of hope to these veterans who had endured so long and uncertain a winter. They rode into Wytheville, Virginia, on a bright pleasant May day. “The birds were chirping in the trees as we marched into the fair grounds,” said John Fields, “and everything indicated that spring had opened. We were thinly clad and had only one thin blanket, and no tent or protection from the weather; and when we awakened next morning we were all covered with snow.”
But the snow melted quickly in the warm sunshine, and they went to work willingly reshoeing horses and preparing defenses for the lead mines at Wytheville and the saltworks at Saltville. With regrets the boys now said farewell to Colonel Adam Johnson, who had held them together for eight of their most difficult months of the war. Johnson had been ordered on a special recruiting mission to his old home territory in occupied western Kentucky.
In addition to the survivors brought up from Georgia, Morgan received a full-strength regiment, the 4th Kentucky Cavalry, under Colonel Henry Giltner. To form the nucleus of a brigade, he divided his old command into two battalions under Captains Jacob Cassell and J. D. Kirkpatrick, with Lieutenant Colonel Alston acting as regimental commander.
For Morgan’s men, prospects seemed much brighter in that late spring of 1864. Some of Tom Quirk’s scouts went into Kentucky to gather information concerning concentrations of cavalry mounts and dispositions of enemy forces. By May, Morgan’s brigade had increased to two thousand men—a third of them dismounted—and there was open talk of a raid into the Bluegrass.
*Alston secured his exchange by proving to Federal authorities that he had been captured by soldiers he had paroled a few hours earlier, and an exception to the new policy of allowing no more exchanges was made in his case.
5
Late in that month, John Morgan quietly began concentrating his brigade near Wytheville, and on the thirty-first he dispatched a message to Richmond informing the War Department that he was starting a raid into Kentucky. By the time Confederate Army headquarters learned of his plans, his columns were through Pound Gap into the Cumberlands.
For the invasion—which would be known as Morgan’s last Kentucky Raid—he had organized his force into three regiments. Colonel D. Howard Smith replaced Alston as commander of the original Morgan men, who were divided into three battalions. The old 2nd Kentucky, now known as the 2nd Battalion, was commanded by Major Jacob Cassell; the 1st Battalion was under Lieutenant Colonel James Bowles, and the 3rd under Major J. D. Kirkpatrick. The other two regiments were Colonel Giltner’s 4th Kentucky and a dismounted group led by Lieutenant Colonel Robert M. Martin, with Alston second in command.
Strength of Cassell’s 2nd Battalion was about two hundred, including such veterans as Tom Quirk, George Ellsworth and John B. Castleman. For seven days they marched over rocky roads, the men on foot struggling vainly to keep up with the horsemen as they climbed mountains, followed meandering valleys and waded innumerable streams. According to John Castleman there was “little for man to eat and nothing for horse.”
At dawn of June 8, they sighted the town of Mount Sterling. For many of them it was their first view of Bluegrass country in almost a year, and as the column came to a halt the men broke into cheers.
Morgan ordered Colonel Smith to take his battalions forward, Giltner’s regiment to hold in reserve. In a few minutes, as the sun brightened the landscape, the enemy’s tent camp became plainly visible. The morning was summery, with lazy sounds—stamping horses, twittering birds, crowing roosters. Smith ordered his men into mounted skirmish lines, then sent Cassell and Bowles forward in a charge.
It was hardly a fight, three hundred Federals surrendering in a matter of minutes. Giltner’s regiment came in at a canter, the men going out of control of their officers as soon as they were in to the streets. Not a store escaped looting, and some private houses were entered in search of f
ood, clothing and valuables.
The worst of these discreditable acts, insofar as Morgan’s later career and the reputation of his command were concerned, was the robbery of the Mount Sterling bank. Morgan apparently first learned of the robbery early in the afternoon when a delegation of citizens called upon him and asked that the stolen money be returned; they pointed out that the deposits belonged to the people of the town, many of them being Confederate sympathizers. They showed Morgan a written order signed by his adjutant, Captain Charles Withers, demanding delivery of the money under penalty of setting fire to every house in Mount Sterling.
According to Captain Withers, who was present, Morgan showed intense anger, turned upon him and demanded: “What does this mean?” Withers was dismayed by the accusation. He examined the paper and swore that it was neither his handwriting nor signature. One of the bankers then volunteered the information that the demand had been presented to him by a man with fair hair and beard who spoke with a German accent. The description fitted only one man in the command, Surgeon R. R. Goode.
Morgan immediately ordered Goode brought to him, but the surgeon was missing. Goode would never return, but his disappearance did not end the affair of the Mount Sterling bank robbery. It would plague Morgan to the last day of his life.
About four o’clock that afternoon as Morgan was preparing to start D. Howard Smith’s regiment out on the road to Lexington, Colonel Smith approached him and suggested that the march be delayed until a complete investigation was made of the bank robbery. “I have just heard of it,” Morgan replied. “I have no time to attend to it now, but will.” He felt that it was more important to continue the raid, rather than risk a fatal delay by a lengthy investigation, and he ordered Smith to lead his battalions out toward Lexington.